How Many Galaxies are in the Universe? New Answer from Darkest Sky Ever Observed

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How Many Galaxies Are in the Universe? A New Answer From the Darkest Sky Ever Observed:

In 2016, a study published in The Astrophysical Journal by a team led by the University of Nottingham's Christopher Conselice used a mathematical model of the early universe to estimate how many of those as-yet-unseen galaxies are lurking just beyond Hubble's sight. Added to existing Hubble observations, their results suggested such galaxies make up 90 percent of the total, leading to a new estimate-that there may be up to two trillion galaxies in the universe.

Such estimates, however, are a moving target. As more observations roll in, scientists can get a better handle on the variables at play and increase the accuracy of their estimates.

Which brings us to the most recent addition to the story.

After buzzing by Pluto and the bizarre Kuiper Belt object, Arrokoth, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is at the edge of the solar system cruising toward interstellar space-and recently, it pulled a Hubble. In a study presented this week at the American Astronomical Society and soon to be published in The Astrophysical Journal, a team led by astronomers Marc Postman and Tod Lauer described what they found after training the New Horizons telescope on seven slivers of empty space to try and measure the level of ambient light in the universe.

Their findings, they say, allowed them to establish an upper limit on the number of galaxies in existence and indicate space may be a little less crowded than previously thought. According to their data, the total number of galaxies is more likely in the hundreds of billions, not trillions. "We simply don't see the light from two trillion galaxies," Postman said in a release published earlier in the week.

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